Sam Bankman-Fried, while currently appealing his 25-year prison sentence, is also seeking a Presidential pardon from Donald Trump as he maintains his innocence.
Former FTX CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, is seeking a pardon from US President Donald Trump as he seeks to have his 25-year prison sentence overturned.
Now, he has filed a pardon application with the US Department of Justice while serving his 25-year sentence.
Bankman-Fried is currently in the second year of his prison sentence after being found guilty of multiple fraud and wire fraud charges due to his involvement in the collapse of FTX, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars of investor funds.
The FTX Founder and his lawyers argued in front of the US Circuit Court of Appeals in November 2025 he did not stand a fair trial in October 2023.
The defence claim evidence supporting the fact FTX had enough funds to cover investor withdrawals was not allowed during the week-long hearing.
While Bankman-Fried admitted to “mistakes” during his time as CEO of FTX, he argued he did not steal money from investors. This will also be supported by his lawyers and will also defend claims the company was solvent.
Bankman-Fried pursued a pardon from the US President after reports at the time suggested his team had reached out to Trump. Bankman-Fried’s parents had reached out to an attorney who had worked on Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign.
Speaking to FOX Business, Bankman-Fried said he would “absolutely” want a Presidential pardon and maintained his innocence over his involvement in the collapse of FTX.
“I didn’t steal user funds either,” said Bankman-Fried. “Customers have been repaid now 170% or so of their deposits. It’s one of the very few cases where the platform was over-collateralised, where customers were more than made whole.
“And yet there was, you know, not just a criminal investigation, but a prosecution. And, you know, dozens of years of sentence(s).
“I can only tell you what I think and, you know, ultimately, customers have been repaid again nearly twice what they had on the platform, and it’s a great disservice to them that it has taken three years.”
Trump’s past Presidential pardons
If successful, Bankman-Fried would not become the first crypto executive to have been granted a Presidential pardon from Trump.
In October 2025, former Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, received a full Presidential pardon after his four month prison sentence. Zhao was sent to prison after admitting to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme at Binance in November 2023.
Karoline Leavitt defended the pardon as a routine use of presidential clemency after a “thorough” internal review. She argued that prosecutors in the prior administration had gone too far and linked the case to what she described as a broader hostility to digital assets.
“The president is exercising his constitutional authority to grant clemency requests… This was an overly prosecuted case by the Biden administration… The previous administration was very hostile to the cryptocurrency industry. The president wants to correct this overreach,” said Leavitt.
Other wealthy individuals to have received pardons from Trump include former Tottenham Hotspur owner Joe Lewis from insider trading charges, and banker Julio M. Herrera Veltutini over several finance charges.
The amount of pardons and clemency approvals from the Trump Administration, reaching up to 1,600 individuals, has raised questions regarding the President’s business interests.
Trump has pardoned 23 people who owed more than $100,000 in fines, according to House.gov, as many high-net-worth individuals had owed fines in the multiple millions, including Zhao who was fined $50m in 2023.
When asked what was his reason for pardoning Zhao, Trump responded to CNN by revealing he did not know who he was. This came after Binance had invested $2bn into World Liberty Financial, which has the backing of the Trump Family.
